1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a droplet ejection head driving circuit and method and a droplet ejection device, and more specifically relates to a droplet ejection head driving circuit and method for supplying driving signals to a droplet ejection head in order to agitate ink, even in a non-printing mode, and to a droplet ejection device therewith.
2. Related Art
High-speed recording is possible with an inkjet recording apparatus which employs a long head in which short head units (short heads) are joined together (for example, a full width array (FWA) head, which is to say, a head which is lengthened to the width of paper). Accordingly, in recent years, the development of inkjet recording apparatuses which employ these long heads has proceeded apace.
In an inkjet recording apparatus which employs this long head, a water content of ink may be reduced in order to prevent swelling of paper, and a processing fluid may be employed in order to hasten drying. Consequently, solidification of ink in ink channels within the recording head and at a nozzle face has become a problem. In order to prevent this, it is necessary to cause vibrations at the ink channels and nozzle face to agitate the ink when in a non-printing mode.
As shown in FIG. 13, energy that an inkjet recording apparatus consumes differs between a preliminary state (warm-up), an operating state (running), a waiting state (stand-by), and a paused state (sleep). An energy consumption efficiency η of the inkjet recording apparatus is shown by the following equation.
                    η        =                              1                          T              total                                ⁢                                    ∑              n                                                                    ⁢                                          T                n                            ⁢                              W                n                                                                        (        1        )            
Therein, Tn represents a duration of each state, Wn represents a power consumption of each state, and the subscripts n are values from 1 to 4.
In order to improve the energy consumption efficiency η, as well as lowering power consumption in the running state, which is a printing mode, lowering power consumption in other states which are a non-printing mode, that is, the warm-up state, the standby state and the sleep state, is required. However, in the standby state, because prompt printing is required when printing data has been inputted, it is difficult to lower the power consumption.